Remember those papier maché alien fruit props from the original Star Trek?

Typically plucked by some nubile extraterrestrial in a plunging neckline and handed to Captain Kirk with endlessly sensual suggestion, these scenes allowed the cheesy series to play out the moral soap opera of Adam and Eve in countless episodes.

Fruit is, was, and always will be the greatest symbolic representation of temptation because without it we wouldn’t be human.

Yet as Yung Chang shows in this new documentary about exotic fruit hunters, a new brand of temptation may be displacing the timeless appeal of fruit – forcing us to detour the ancient agricultural path to happiness by taking the straight, monotonous paved road to profit.

The whole equation is laid out relatively early as Chang introduces us to a group of fruit-loving fanatics who spend their lives pursuing the very rarest, and the very ripest, nature has to offer.

From trekking through the jungles of Borneo to the banana farms of Honduras, Chang lets us tag along on these scented adventures as the experts explain how and why the natural world is changing.

Inevitably, no matter where on the planet the camera happens to be, we’re told the quest for cash is threatening the bio-diversity of a given eco-system, and taking the fate of singular fruits along with it.

In the soggy rainforest, it means fruit trees are being logged for lumber or burned for crop production. In the heart of Greater Los Angeles, it means a hidden orchard for the citizens of Hollywood could be paved under for condos.

It’s a sadly predictable dynamic, and one we’ve seen in countless movies that use the battle between dirt and development as the central source of tension: The bad people wear hardhats and suits. The good people wear overalls covered in organic mud.

Chang gracefully sidesteps the agitprop angle of his movie by going for grand, poetic visuals instead of talking head rhetoric. He also enlists the rather sympathetic presence of veteran actor Bill Pullman.

Pullman tells us he’s been had an agrarian heart since he was a kid, but it was only once he moved to Los Angeles and found a plot of land that he could terrace and cultivate that his passion truly bloomed.

Pullman’s love for tree-ripened produce also dug him into the furrow of activism, and while the actor is clearly motivated to protect the natural beauty around him, he never comes off like a militant whiner or a self-righteous eco-bully.

This is a lot more important than it seems because it ensures Chang’s movie never feels like an old saw laboriously cutting at the trunk of the status quo.

We’re allowed to sit back as Chang takes us on a globetrotting expedition to greet strange fruits. Along the way, we get an encyclopedic explanation of the evolving dynamic between plants and man.

Agriculture and the whole practice of grafting, planting and nurturing the natural world for our own ends marked the beginning of human settlements and civilization. From the time we figured out how to propagate certain species with success, we began to harness the potential of the world around us.

Chang gracefully draws a line linking our fleshy evolution to that of fruit, and in so doing, expands the scope of this rather focused non-fiction film. This isn’t just a movie about the incredible delectables at our global table, it’s a movie about our very essence as pleasure-seeking creatures.

Decadence, knowledge and life itself is symbolized in the perfect form of fruit, and while Chang goes a great distance in getting us back to the garden, his urge to make a grand statement about humankind feels a little unfinished.

Relying on cinematic tricks, computer animation and far too many dramatic recreations (we didn’t need to see actors as Neanderthals), Chang pulls out all the stops to lend this earthy movie some glitzy magic.

He didn’t need to. The extra bells and whistles add production value, but they actually strip the film of its folksy authenticity and human mood. The apple is just a little too shiny in places, suggesting Chang waxed the skin when all we really wanted was the real deal.